The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Nobility and Lineages in the Early Modern Period

Blood, Land and Power

Professor David George (Swansea University) Professor Paul Garner (University of Leeds)

Editorial Board

Samuel Amago (University of Virginia) Roger Bartra (Universidad Autónoma de México)

Paul Castro (University of Glasgow) Richard Cleminson (University of Leeds) Catherine Davies (University of London) Luisa-Elena Delgado (University of Illinois)

Maria Delgado (Central School of Speech and Drama, London) Will Fowler (University of St Andrews)

David Gies (University of Virginia) Gareth Walters (Swansea University) Duncan Wheeler (University of Leeds)

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Ignacio Aguiló

Catalan Culture: Experimentation, creative imagination and the relationship with Spain

Lloyd Hughes Davies, J. B. Hall and D. Gareth Walters Madness and Irrationality in Spanish and Latin American

Literature and Culture Lloyd Hughes Davies

Blood, Land and Power

The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Nobility and Lineages in the Early Modern Period

MANUEL PEREZ-GARCIA

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2021

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ISBN 978-1-78683-710-3 e-ISBN 978-1-78683-711-0

The right of Manuel Perez-Garcia to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Blood, Land and Power is available as an open access publication DOI 10.16922/bloodlandpower

This research has been sponsored and financially supported from the GECEM (Global Encounters between China and Europe: Trade Networks, Consumption and Cultural Exchanges in Macau and Marseille, 1680-1840) Project hosted by the University Pablo de Olavide, UPO (Seville, Spain), www.gecem.eu. The GECEM Project is funded by the ERC (European Research Council)-Starting Grant, under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, ref. 679371. The Principal Investigator is Professor Manuel Perez-Garcia (Distinguished Researcher at UPO).

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the medical profession. His altruistic and generous service to the care of the community deserves full recognition, being an example to follow for the education and direction of the family. Without your support and your example of commitment and enthusiasm to your work, I would never have been able to write this book.

The family is the stronghold to keep the values, ethics and unity of our society.

Contents

Series Editors’ Foreword ix

Acknowledgements xi

List of Figures, Graphs and Tables xv

Foreword by J. B. Owens xxi

Introduction 1

1 Lineage, Glory and Honour in the Late Middle Ages:

Conquest and Consolidation of Economic Power 7

2 Honour and Purity of Blood 40

3 Building a Social Network through Political, Social and

Institutional ties 105

4 Family and Entailed Estate (Mayorazgo): First-Borns as Keepers of the Family’s Economic Power 164

Conclusions 221

Bibliography 228

Notes 255

Appendix 298

Index 327

Series Editors’ Foreword

Over recent decades the traditional ‘languages and literatures’

model in Spanish departments in universities in the United Kingdom has been superseded by a contextual, interdisciplinary and ‘area studies’ approach to the study of the culture, history, society and politics of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds – cate- gories that extend far beyond the confines of the Iberian Peninsula, not only in Latin America but also to Spanish-speaking and Lusophone Africa.

In response to these dynamic trends in research priorities and curriculum development, this series is designed to present both disciplinary and interdisciplinary research within the general field of Iberian and Latin American Studies, particularly studies that explore all aspects of Cultural Production (inter alia literature, film, music, dance, sport) in Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, Catalan, Galician and indigenous languages of Latin America. The series also aims to publish research in the History and Politics of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds, at the level of both the region and the nation-state, as well as on Cultural Studies that explore the shifting terrains of gender, sexual, racial and postcolonial identi- ties in those same regions.

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of the academic actions and activities of the GECEM (Global Encounters between China and Europe: Trade Networks, Consumption and Cultural Exchanges in Macau and Marseille, 1680–

1840, www.gecem.eu) Project. The workshops and academic forums in which I have participated since GECEM started in June 2016, in Tokyo, Beijing, Boston, Shanghai, Oxford, Paris, Vancouver, Seville, Mexico City, Guadalajara, San José (Costa Rica) and Murcia have served to obtain feedback from outstanding scholars and improve upon the ideas and early drafts of this book.

I wish to acknowledge the financial support of the European Research Council (ERC)-Starting Grant, under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, at the Pablo de Olavide University (UPO) in Seville (Spain), which acts as European host for GECEM. The academic collaboration with my colleague and friend Professor Lucio de Sousa (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) has helped and encouraged me to undertake my career as a historian in China and in the 2011 founding of the Global History Network in China (GHN) in Beijing, www.globalhistorynetwork.com.

We have jointly established a permanent academic forum of discussion and publications through GHN to promote knowledge and understanding of the still unknown East Asian world and culture, and the exchanges with Europe and the Western world.

Expanding the GHN through organised academic meetings in China, Europe, and the Americas has helped us to invigorate the field of global history and early modern history of western and eastern regions. Obtaining my current European Research Council (ERC)-Starting Grant in the autumn of 2015 has made it possible to further this mission, which has crystallised in the publi- cation of this book by the University of Wales Press.

I am grateful to academic institutions and partners of GECEM and GHN such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, the Beijing Center for Chinese Studies at the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing, China), the Macau Ricci Institute at the University of Saint Joseph (Macau), the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, the Centre for Global History at the University of Oxford, the Center of Global History and European Studies at Pittsburgh University, the Centre of Global History at the University of Warwick, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France), the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, and the Faculty of Economics and Business at the Universidad de Murcia.

I specially want to thank GECEM Project team members Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, Marisol Vidales Bernal, Omar Svriz, Manuel Díaz Ordoñez, Nadia Fernández de Pinedo Echeverria, María Jesús Milán Agudo, Rocío Moreno Cabanillas, Felix Muñoz, Jin Lei, Wang Li and Guimel Hernández. I am grateful to comments and suggestions made by Jack Owens, Jesus Cruz, Jean-Pierre Dedieu, Mafalda Soares da Cunha, Luis Jauregui, Richard von Glahn, Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, Anne McCants, Shigeru Akita, Gakusho Nakajima, Mihoko Oka, Carlos Marichal, Dennis Flynn, Patrick O’Brien, Pat Manning, Joe P. McDermott, Leonard Blusse, François Gipouloux, Debin Ma, Leonor Diaz de Seabra and Antonio Ibarra. I would also like to thank the PAIDI group HUM-1000 Historia de la Globalización: Violencia, Negociación e Interculturalidad at Area de Historia Moderna (UPO), of which I am a member. The Principal Investigator of the PAIDI group is Igor Pérez Tostado, funded by Junta de Andalucía (Seville, Spain). Igor Pérez, Bethany Aram and Fernando Ramos deserve a special word of gratitude for their support and help. I also express my gratitude to the Project HAR2014-53797-P Globalización Ibérica: redes entre Asia y Europa y los cambios en las pautas de consumo en Latinoamérica whose Principal Investigator is Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO). I am also a research member of this project.

Special mention should be made of Professor Manuel Barcia (Chair of Global History at the University of Leeds) for his support with this book. Also, a special word of thanks to Sarah Lewis, head

of commissioning at the University of Wales Press, for believing in this project. I am thankful for the assistance of Paula de la Cruz- Fernández and Elisabeth O’Kane Lipartito (from the translation and editing group Edita.us) in the proofreading, translating and reviewing of this manuscript.

My wife Marisol Vidales Bernal needs a very special word of thanks as she played a key role in developing my work and research in China. She has helped and encouraged me to undertake my career as a historian in China. Her generous support and love beyond limits have helped me to overcome great difficulties and to carry on with our life in the Far East. Without her, this book would not have been possible.

In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to the Delegation of the European Union to China and Euraxess China, which has been essential in expanding the scientific results and GECEM output to Chinese academic and non-academic audiences. The main goal is to transfer knowledge from China to Europe and vice versa, as well as spreading the history and culture of Europe within China. The constant and generous support of Philippe Vialatte (Minister Counsellor, Head of Science and Technology Section of the Delegation of the European Union to China) and Halldor Berg (Chief Representative of Euraxess China) to the GECEM Project and GHN is of great value when expanding our mission and fostering high-quality academic research among European and non-European researchers based in China.

Shanghai (China), autumn 2019

Figures, Graphs and Tables

Figures

Figure 1.1 Genealogy of the Riquelme lineage (1264–1598) 38 Figure 2.1 Genealogy of the Paz Family, fifteenth to

eighteenth centuries 102, 298

Figure 3.1 Crossed marriages of siblings of different sex

(endogamy) 108 Figure 3.2 Crossed marriages of siblings of same sex

(endogamy) 108 Figure 3.3 Intergenerational endogamic marriages 113 Figure 3.4 Endogamic unions through marriage turn  115 Figure 3.5 Social network of Riquelme and Fontes families

in the concejo (1700–1820) 142

Figure 3.6 Social network of Riquelme and Fontes families

in ecclesiastical institutions (1700–1820) 143 Figure 3.7 Antonio Fontes Paz’s (third marquis of Torre

Pacheco) social network through the Cofradías of Santiago de la Espada and Nuestro Padre

Jesús Nazareno (1700–1820) 155

Figure 3.8 Coalition between the Riquelme and Fontes

lineages, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries  162, 300 Figure 4.1 Castilian inheritance system 165 Figure 4.2 Endogamy marriages between siblings 167 Figure 4.3 Señorío of Santo Ángel, fifteenth to seventeenth

centuries 170, 302

Figure 4.4 Line of inheritance of the señorío of Campo Coy in the Riquelme lineage, sixteenth to

seventeenth centuries 175

Figure 4.5 Line of inheritance of the mayorazgo that Don Cristóbal de Arroniz, third lord of Santo Ángel, and Doña Nofra Riquelme founded, sixteenth

to seventeenth centuries 176

Figure 4.6 Line of inheritance of the mayorazgo that Don Diego Riquelme de Comontes, third lord of Coy, and Doña Beatriz Bustamante founded, sixteenth

to seventeenth centuries 178

Figure 4.7 Line of transfer of Pedro Muñoz’s mayorazgo,

sixteenth to seventeenth centuries 180 Figure 4.8 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Juan de

Robles and Catalina Musso Davila founded,

sixteenth to seventeenth centuries 181 Figure 4.9 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo of Don Juan de

Junco and Doña Francisca Ballester, seventeenth

century 184, 303

Figure 4.10 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo of Doña

Fabiana Salad y Anduga, seventeenth century 184 Figure 4.11 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo of Don Diego

Riquelme de Avilés and Doña Constanza de

Bernal, sixteenth to nineteenth centuries 188, 304 Figure 4.12 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo of Don Pedro

Hurtado de Mendoza, sixteenth to nineteenth

centuries 189, 305

Figure 4.13 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don Onofre Fontes de Albornoz and Doña Isabel Pagán Riquelme founded, sixteenth to

nineteenth centuries 190, 306

Figure 4.14 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don Alonso de Paz founded, sixteenth to nineteenth

centuries 193, 307

Figure 4.15 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don Jaime de Rocamora founded, sixteenth to nineteenth

centuries 194, 308

Figure 4.16 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Doña

Ana de Moya founded 195, 309

Figure 4.17 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo of Don Juan Damián de la Peraleja, seventeenth to

nineteenth centuries 196, 310

Figure 4.18 Riquelme-Fontes genealogy and links with the

Peraleja family, sixteenth to nineteenth centuries 197, 311 Figure 4.19 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don

Bernardino Fontes de Albornoz Riquelme

funded, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries 198, 312 Figure 4.20 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don

Macías Fontes Carrillo, first marquis of Torre Pacheco, founded, seventeenth to nineteenth

centuries 200 Figure 4.21 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don

Alejandro Fontes founded 202

Figure 4.22 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don Gaspar de Salafranca and Doña Ana de

Zúñiga founded 210, 313

Figure 4.23 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don Cristóbal, Doña Nofra, Don Luis, don Diego Riquelme and Doña Isabel de Bustamante founded as shown in the decisions of the

Consejo de Castilla 211, 314

Figure 4.24 Line of transfer of the mayorazgo that Don Cristóbal, Doña Nofra, Don Luis, Don Diego Riquelme and Doña Isabel de Bustamante

owned in real and practical terms 212, 315 Figure 4.25 Genealogy of Riquelme family in coalition

with Salafranca family, sixteenth to

nineteenth centuries 214, 316

Figure 4.26 Genealogy of Riquelme family in coalition with Almela, Junco, and Salad y Anduga y Tomas Families, sixteenth to seventeenth

centuries 216, 320

Figure 4.27 Genealogy of Riquelme lineage, thirteenth

to nineteenth centuries 218, 322

Graphs

Graph 1.1 Social structure of the Riquelme lineage 12 Graph 1.2 Lands given to the Riquelme in the

thirteenth-century land partitions 14 Graph 1.3 Riquelme family members as regidores 37 Graph 2.1 Inquisitorial processes of the Paz family of

Frejenal background (1491–1550) 67

Graph 2.2 Declarations of the interrogation processes

at Frejenal 74

Graph 2.3 Witnesses’ social status 78

Graph 2.4 Witnesses’ professions 78

Graph 2.5 Membership of military orders by Riquelme lineage and related families, sixteenth to

eighteenth centuries 83

Graph 2.6 Hábitos in the hands of Riquelme lineage and related families, sixteenth to eighteenth

centuries 83 Graph 2.7 Regidurías of the Riquelme-Fontes (1598–1833) 91 Graph 2.8 Riquelme members in nobility cofradías,

sixteenth to eighteenth centuries 101

Graph 3.1 Social status of the members of the Cofradías of Santiago de la Espada and Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno, seventeenth to nineteenth

centuries 161 Graph 4.1 Income (in reales) of lands of two mayorazgos

under Juana Riquelme from year one to year four 177

Tables

Table 1.1 Social structure of the Riquelme lineage 11 Table 1.2 Lands owned by Pedro Gómez Dávalos seized

after the 1391 rebellion 20

Table 1.3 Public office positions held by the Riquelme

family, thirteenth to sixteenth centuries 34 Table 2.1 Positions of the Paz Family (1411–1600) 59 Table 2.2 Interrogation in the villa and court of Madrid 61 Table 2.3 Interrogation in the city of Murcia 62 Table 2.4 Genealogical antecedents of the Paz family 64 Table 2.5 Individuals ascribed to the Fontes-Paz lineage

and qualified as actos positivos 69

Table 2.6 Interrogation in Frejenal de la Sierra 72 Table 2.7 Interrogation at the villa of Berlanga 77 Table 2.8 Military order hábitos of the Riquelme lineage

and related families, sixteenth to eighteenth

centuries 81 Table 2.9 Nobility titles presented during limpieza de

sangre examinations of Francisco de Borja

Fontes Riquelme and Antonio Fontes Abad 85 Table 2.10 Military positions in the Consejos Reales exercised

by Riquelme and Fontes members, sixteenth to

eighteenth centuries 86

Table 2.11 Regidurías of the Riquelme-Fontes, seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries 89

Table 2.12 Riquelme-Fontes appointed as alcaldes 91 Table 2.13 Riquelme-Fontes in the Cofradía of Santiago

de la Espada 95

Table 2.14 Riquelme-Fontes in the Cofradía of San Pedro

Mártir de Verona 98

Table 2.15 Riquelme-Fontes with positions in the Santo

Oficio, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries 98 Table 2.16 Caro Fontes members of the Cofradía Nuestra

Señora de la Soledad de Valencia 101

Table 3.1 The zenith of the Riquelme lineage: Martín

Riquelme’s (‘el valeroso’) marriage strategy 110 Table 3.2 Riquelme family civil and ecclesiastical powers 112

Table 3.3 Prebendados of the Riquelme lineage in the

cathedral of Murcia 112

Table 3.4 Consanguineal marriages between Riquelme-

Fontes 117 Table 3.5 Double marriages within the Riquelme lineage 121

Table 3.6 Marrying age 123

Table 3.7 The dowry and arras of the Riquelme-Fontes

family, fifteenth to eighteenth centuries 129

Table 3.8 Riquelme-Fontes nuns 133

Table 3.9 Baptismal and marriage records, sixteenth to

eighteenth centuries 137

Table 3.10 Life-cycle of Antonio Fontes Paz (third marquis

of Torre Pacheco) 144

Table 3.11 Notarial records 145

Table 3.12 Frequency of individuals/relations with Antonio

Fontes Paz 152

Table 3.13 Position of regidor: purity of blood examination

of Antonio Fontes Paz 153

Table 3.14 Frequency of relations of Antonio Fontes Paz with individuals of the Cofradías of Santiago de la Espada and Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno

(1700–1820) 156 Table 3.15 Frequency of relationships between Antonio

Riquelme y Fontes and other individuals from the Cofradías of Santiago de la Espada and

Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno (1794–1843) 159 Table 4.1 Properties in the mayorazgo that Don Cristóbal

and Doña Nofra Riquelme created 171

Table 4.2 Lists (memorial) of the property linked to

Luis Riquelme de Aviles 171

Table 4.3 Lands rented by Cristóbal Riquelme de Arroniz (sixth lord of Santo Ángel) that were under

mayorazgo 174

Table 4.4 Income of lands under Don Cristóbal Riquelme

and Arroniz, sixth lord of Santo Ángel 177 Table 4.5 Possessions in Pedro Muñoz’s mayorazgo 181 Table 4.6 Succession order that Pedro Muñoz’s mayorazgo

clauses established 182

Table 4.7 Censuses 185

Table 4.8 Land properties 187

Table 4.9 Properties belonging to the mayorazgo that Don Onofre Fontes de Albornoz and Doña Isabel

Pagán Riquelme founded 189

Table 4.10 Properties of the vínculo that Don Alonso de

Paz founded 191

Table 4.11 Properties of the mayorazgo founded by Don

Jaime Rocamora 193

Table 4.12 Properties in the mayorazgo of Don Juan Damián

de la Peraleja 196

Table 4.13 Properties in the mayorazgo of Don Macías

Fontes Carrillo (first marquis of Torre Pacheco) 199 Table 4.14 Properties in the mayorazgo of Don Alejandro

Fontes 201 Table 4.15 Additions to the mayorazgo of Don Alejandro

Fontes 201 Table 4.16 Properties in the mayorazgo of Don Juan Marín

Blázquez 202 Table 4.17 Properties in the mayorazgo of Doña Catalina

de Avilés y Fajardo 204

Table 4.18 Properties in the mayorazgo of Don Gaspar de

Salafranca and his spouse Doña Ana de Zúñiga 210 Table 4.19 Riquelme lineage branches competing for the

Riquelme, Muñoz, Robles, Bustamante,

Peñaranda and Salafranca mayorazgos 213 Table 4.20 Social network of the Riquelme created by

founding mayorazgos 220

Foreword

You are about to read an important book. Perhaps I can best defend this assertion by recounting a personal anecdote.

At the end of 1977, I arrived with my family in Murcia, a city on the Segura river in south-eastern Spain, which none of us had visited before. From the publications of Professor Juan Torres Fontes, one of Spain’s most distinguished medieval historians and Murcia’s municipal archivist, I knew that the collection of the volumes of the Actas capitulares, the minutes of the sessions of the city’s civic council (ayuntamiento) survived with gaps from 1364–5.

For the period after the fourteenth century, only two volumes are missing, one for the fifteenth century and one for the sixteenth.

Important municipalities like Murcia typically administered a large territorial jurisdiction, and that of Murcia extended well beyond its irrigated orchards and fields. Its jurisdiction extended from the right bank of the Segura to the Mediterranean Sea and from the left bank well into the arid pasturelands for large flocks of goats and sheep. I had also read, on microfilm, a remarkable book published in 1621 by an important Golden Age writer and Murcian native, Francisco de Cascales (1563?–1642). As part of his Discursos históricos about Murcia, Cascales included brief chapters about many of the patrician families, highlighting their estates, marriages, office holding, service to Church and crown, and honours. I had begun to computerise this information, which provided the basis for the funding proposal I submitted to a joint Spanish–US committee to support my research in Murcia.

During almost twenty months, I read through the Actas capitu- lares and learned a great deal about the interests of the patrician councillors who held positions as jurados (parish representatives) and regidores (royally designated governors). My understanding of

the cultural and social environments of the Murcian region was also greatly enriched by recent publications of young, talented French and Spanish researchers. On this basis, in 1980 I published a book (in Spanish) showing the impact of a Murcian social revolu- tion, 1519–22, in the midst of a larger Castilian rebellion against the kingdom’s royal administration. The revolutionary leaders exiled all of Murcia’s elite councillors and their relatives in order to establish a broader-based municipal government. In exile the patrician councillors established a pact for joint action. My book tells the story of this revolutionary period and, until its demise in the 1540s and 1550s, the development of a more cohesive oligar- chic government once the revolution had been defeated.

Because I intended to publish a second book recounting the subsequent crisis decade of the 1560s and the emergence from potential disaster of a much more cohesive oligarchy, I read all of the Actas capitulares until the middle of the seventeenth century.

On this basis, in 1981 I published (in Spanish) a guide to the civic council from about 1500 until 1650. In this work I explain the nature of Murcia’s government, and I list all of the jurados and regi- dores. I felt that one could not generalise about the actions of a deliberative body without knowing something about the motiva- tions of those who participated in its meetings.

Because this type of research possessed implications well beyond the local, I sought to establish a model for work on municipal coun- cils: a researcher would tie a historical narrative to published information about the men who held council seats and their fami- lies. Moreover, I hoped that if other historians knew the identities of the patrician councillors during some important period, they would focus their work on other archival collections in order to enrich our understanding of these men and the interactions of elite men and women, which shaped not only Murcia’s history but that of the expanding, planetary Hispanic monarchy as well.

Along with others, Manuel Perez-Garcia answered my call. The promulgation of the Spanish constitution of 1978 opened a period of regionalism in the country’s political and cultural life, and the publication of local histories founded on municipal and regional archives emerged as something of a ‘cottage industry’. However, Perez-Garcia’s ambition extends well beyond this often limited genre. To achieve his goals, he exploits a variety of important types of archival holdings beyond the records of the civic council, which

I used. Moreover, he expands the chronological limits of the story to encompass over five centuries, and its geographical limits to encompass the kingdom of Murcia (roughly the modern provinces of Albacete and Murcia) and territories beyond its boundaries.

From this broad perspective, he recognises that the key activities, which would show the dense connections among elite men and women, pointed to the founding, maintenance, and expansion of entailed estates (mayorazgos), the major family legal tool for avoiding the damaging fragmentation of a lineage’s patrimony among multiple heirs. To carve his way through the dense jungle surrounding the entailed estate, particularly over a long period of time, Perez-Garcia selects an important lineage, the Riquelme, whose fortunes he could follow over a number of centuries. These two brilliant decisions – to focus on entailed estates (and inherit- ance conflicts) and on the social networks of the resilient Riquelme – enable him to make an outstanding contribution to our growing understanding of the Hispanic monarchy until the entire edifice of what some historians call the ‘Old Regime’ crumbled when liberal constitutionalism emerged as a revolutionary force, which changed for ever the political framework and themes of conflict and social cohesion for a new Spanish nation.

J. B. Owens PhD Emeritus Professor of History and

Distinguished Researcher, Idaho State University, USA

Boise, Idaho May 2020

(Anon., Cantar de Mio Cid, verse 20.

Translation into English from P. Blackburn and G. Economou, Poem of the Cid:

A Modern Translation with Notes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 9)

Introduction

Western and eastern values of society underscore the family as a fundamental social structure and institution.¹ The family reveals the most significant sociocultural features of European communi- ties in a given context, and these become central communication channels back to the family. This idea asserts James Casey’s axiom that family and society are part of a single unit.²

The family is at the centre of this study and is also its organisa- tional reference: through the structure of the family, I show how a complex and highly hierarchised society like the ancien régime’s worked and evolved. Furthermore, the individual is the main protagonist of this social tapestry. The tracking of the life-cycle, namely by following main vital events such as birth, marriage and death becomes the main technique and method to explore an individual’s world and social reality.³ This study focuses on recon- structing the life trajectory of members of the most important urban oligarchic families, analysing the social behaviour and modus operandi of this social elite in southern Spain.

A close look into the institutions and the socioeconomic evolu- tion of the Crown of Castile, of which the kingdom of Murcia was part, and its connections to the elites that were closer to court in Madrid and also to the kingdom of Portugal, allows the analysis of the modus vivendi and the behavioural patterns of the oligarchy in early modern Europe.⁴ Specifically, this book explores the case of two families of the oligarchy, the Riquelme and the Fontes y Paz families, and analyses the behaviour and social evolution of the individuals involved in these families and their relationships with other oligarchical families during the ancien régime and at the turn of the nineteenth century in Spain. This is a study of the local, within the framework of microhistory, that also aims to better

explain the global-scale transformations that were ongoing in early modern southern Europe.⁵ My goal is to understand and comprehend how members of the elite acted and moved through diverse social circumstances through the use of mechanisms and strategies that helped them maintain a closed society and also prevented lower estates from entering their high social stratum.

However, as this book demonstrates, there were times and social contexts in which the group of families that were at the top of the social pyramid were not so closed among themselves. This social mestizaje (fusion) is the result of a social survival strategy where the oligarchy allied with emerging socioeconomic groups coming from the business world, who themselves sought to emulate the old oligarchy and move upward through the acquisition of nobility titles.⁶

Contrasts and contradictions defined European baroque society, making the study of the family and its evolution during different phases and times extremely complex. The idea of the ‘group’s interest’ versus the ‘individual’s interest’ is therefore fundamental in this analysis. The individual, in a hierarchised society such as the ancien régime, is not isolated, but rather follows a pattern or guide to be able to promote himself socially and have a high social, political and economic position in society. The concepts of lineage and the home thus emerged strongly. Individuals from the most illustrious and pre-eminent families of the oligarchy in southern Spain (the kingdom of Murcia) acted along the group patron’s standards, who himself represented, preserved and symbolised the memory of the fundador de la casa (founder of the house), a common ancestor and mythical figure acting as image of a glorious past that itself extolled the lineage. The head of household was the pater familias, a superior figure to whom all other individuals of the family group were subject for protection. The concept of the family group or lineage must not be understood within the framework of the nuclear family or immediate family.⁷ Rather, it is the affiliation and belonging to a group defined as more than one generation cohabiting in the same physical space or casa (house) and, in terms of the symbolic sphere, refers to the belonging given through blood and family ties embedded in old and noble families since the Reconquista.

Another suggestive and evocative term that will surface is that of social reproduction – a concept that reflects preservation and

permanency within the main institutions of power and the consoli- dation of the socioeconomic status of the family group.⁸ Such a concept means perpetuation. In other words, social reproduction is the mechanism that social classes use to achieve reproduction and, ideally, a perpetual belonging to groups and families of power, who created specific strategies to reproduce, maintain and aspire to high status and an elevated level of patrimonial wealth mainly in Mediterranean Europe.⁹ The Riquelme family, like most of the other lineages of the oligarchy from the time of settlement in the kingdom of Murcia in the thirteenth century, focused on social reproduction by remaining in the different conquered public powers – political, social, economic and religious, generation after generation.

In turn, there was an ideal of duration and perpetuity that mani- fested itself through memory, identity, representation and symbolism, terms that were reflected in perfect symbiosis between the individual and the collective within the group. It was the confluence of interests of the social actor closely related to those of the family group that boosted the symbolic capital of the family (in itself structured through kinship) as a collective institution. This study also shows that there were times of negotiation, tension and conflict when rupture and separation of interests between the indi- vidual and the collective or group occurred.¹⁰ This internal disunity of the family group resulted in frictions and disputes within the lineage that weakened it and forced its social stagnation.

Marriage was among the strongest strategies and mechanisms used to counteract such social processes of immobilism.¹¹ Unions between important and powerful families, through studied and rigorous marriage arrangements, had it as their objective to main- tain or augment the socioeconomic and political power of the families. Marriage meant relational capital, or the strengthening of blood ties between the powerful families, developing a new problem for the scholar, as kinship needs to be analysed in its social dimension. This book explains how the ties that connected indi- viduals, the extent and frequency in which these links took place, are representative of the degree of patronage and clientelism developed among them and within family groups.

To reconstruct the intricate complex of social relationships that an individual goes through in his life-cycle, I use the sociological concept of ‘social network analysis’.¹² Mapping out the social

network of ancien régime Mediterranean European society can prove difficult, however, owing to the scarcity of sources. But mostly the challenge arises because of the variety of social relationships that individuals develop, not only within their own high social stratum but also with middle and lower social groups. Though it may appear contradictory, this amalgam of social relationships is only the result of the set of interests and strategies that the lineage adopts as it adapts to certain social circumstances, with the aim of maintaining a balance of power among different social groups and maintaining and perpetuating itself.

Consanguinity, patronage, fictitious kinship, alliance, paisanaje (common local origin) and friendship are what sustained the ties and bonds mentioned above. Hence the network of relationships that the family generates is fundamental. Nevertheless, it is impor- tant to emphasise that elements of consanguinity and kinship are not always present when building a social network – in contrast, there were many cases where strong ties among ‘non-consanguin- eals’ (allegados), closely related individuals, were formed based only on solid friendship and patronage. Relationships were created, built, consolidated, and also contested, through conquering the different ecclesiastical and seigneurial powers, as well as those at court (as space for social promotion) surrounding the figure of the king.

The long-term framework and perspective (longue durée) is also central to this study.¹³ By following the individuals’ life-cycles within local oligarchies and their lineages during long time spans, this book shows how social changes occurred from era to era, from medieval times to early modern, and also then to the modern era.

Though this study does not attempt to present a definitive analyt- ical method, or a solution to understanding social transformation, it calls for the scholarship of early modern southern Europe to broaden its temporal and spatial framework so that a comparative methodology can be used to include new case studies. Long-term approaches allow us to understand the role that family networks as power structures employed through time, and how the individuals and elites linked to them perpetuated their position in the public sphere. The key is to unravel such processes of adaptation or meta- morphosis of the elites, analysing their ability to remain in power and gather new economic and political levels of power in each period.¹⁴

This book borrows from other fields of knowledge in the social sciences and the humanities such as history, economics, anthro- pology, sociology, modern languages, international studies and others aiming for broader, but also richer and deeper, conclusions that can shed light on the complex process that is social transfor- mation. In addition, the contributions and continuous renewal of approaches to studying the family within history subdisciplines, namely global history, economic history and historical demog- raphy,¹⁵ have recently provided significantly helpful models of analysis, enriching studies that focus on family reconstruction, the attention to the concept of life-cycle, the building of genealogies, and emphasis on social networks.¹⁶ Within these fields, scholars have contributed to explaining and clarifying the complex mecha- nisms and the social processes of the ancien régime, shedding light on the complexity of how strategies and relationships in social groups operate where there is a system of both vertical and hori- zontal relationships, and interweaving this analysis with concepts of hierarchy, hegemony, patronage, clientelism and fidelity.

This research approach represents both continuity and renewal in regard to what we know about family life and economy, since it considers the family as the main social structure and thus the insti- tution through which social changes can best be observed. The studies that advocate the combination of microhistory and global history have forced the revision of many generalisations in tradi- tional scholarship about the impact that household and family groups and society played in large social, economic and cultural processes.¹⁷

In this sense, to determine the causes and the consequences of the entire process of change is arduous – the interaction of indi- vidual versus society, in its multiple formats, and how these operate at the core of the family, is a key factor in explaining social trans- formation. The permanence and the durability of family structures such as inheritance practices, sociability and a specific culture around genealogy, counterbalance the transition from the ancien régime to liberalism, and are fundamental in the study of change over time and of the transition from pre-industrial to modern soci- eties. The extent of resistance generated from family groups and traditional institutions will determine the speed at which the change towards modernity occurs. Such a factor explains that, in western and eastern societies, the models of economic

development diverged during the first industrialisation, resulting in some more developed societies while others stagnated, as can be seen in the case of the northern and north-western European economies (United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Belgium) on the one hand, and China on the other.¹⁸

The family as an important subject of study has been seen as a phenomenon that resulted from cultural, social, economic and political construction, rather than analysis of it in relation to the concepts of extended family, lineage, paisanaje and the institutions of the community in which the family lives. I thus argue that the family is the starting point in understanding the social, political, economic and cultural patterns in which the individual is involved in a specific period of time. The goal of historians who study the family should therefore be, in the case of Spain, to determine to what extent the family explains the evolution of Spanish society.¹⁹ This book seeks both to build upon and to contribute to the schol- arship that emphasises, and in some way renews, within the paradigms of microhistory and global history, the importance of analysing more exhaustively socioeconomic and cultural changes that occurred around the household and the domestic space. In the last couple of decades, the complexity of social changes has been well shown through the intense study of family groups and social actors. Scholars have demonstrated that this process of transformation is extremely slow and based upon strong and close relationships and social ties that had been forming for centuries.

Thus I assert my claim to cross the hard chronological and discipli- nary barriers that have contained the historian in straitjacketed perspectives, resulting in narrow and biased studies, both in regard to time and space, which have also created unclear conclusions and models to explain socioeconomic change in western and eastern societies.²⁰

Lineage Glory and Honour in the Late Middle Ages:

Conquest and Consolidation of Economic Power

1.1. War, Power and Land: From the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period (1265–1350)

The actions that the Riquelme family pursued in the last third of the thirteenth century to become part of the troops to conquer the kingdom of Murcia were in perfect alignment with the Castilian monarchy’s reconquest campaign. The Riquelme would later settle in the kingdom after receiving the donación (donation) of lands and heredamientos (inheritances) that the crown provided in return for their services rendered during the conquest campaigns.¹

The Riquelme lineage was a typical case of an outsider family that permanently settled in the kingdom of Murcia during the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula.² They were part of a larger group of the peninsula’s Christian population that moved to the Murcian territory seeking easy riches and a comfortable way of life.

Nevertheless, there were limits to their aims to increase their family wealth and estate. Among the difficulties that the new settlers faced and that truly hindered their socioeconomic development were the scarcity of land given, lack of resources to exploit the inherited properties, the limited productivity of the land and the lack of water.³

For legitimacy and real social advancement, the making of what can be defined as ‘historical memory’ began. Thus, among the

Riquelme family group, the concepts of lineage, family, political strategies, social reproduction and a hereditary system began to take shape around the framework of land possession in southern Spain. It was during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the true lineage identity started to become coherent – and it happened around an already fixed heritage and estate, and an established surname. As James Casey says, ‘up until the thirteenth century, genealogies were like an entangled web from which a fortuitous man emerges from the average, makes a fortune and takes upon a lineage for himself, which is based on a last name that comes from the tower or town that he himself built.’⁴

The concept of the family provides a framework to analyse the acting mechanisms and the behavioural patterns of the individual, which he drew from the group’s interest. In the Castilian system, las Partidas (Divisions) show that the group was structured strictly in a conjugal fashion (husbands and sons).⁵ However, some scholars have noted that the family, during the late medieval period, was already using specific mechanisms to build up a group that would be identified through lineage, which in itself was defined through close ties of kinship and common interests.⁶ Kinship at the time was becoming a cultural phenomenon subject to the Church’s rules, established in Europe after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), in regard to the degree of consanguinity – or real kinship – though these norms were not always respected.⁷ Political strate- gies and social reproduction worked hand in hand, and they became extremely valuable in the late medieval period in providing the family with a true idea of group cohesion. In this sense, marriage was a fundamental tool in this process.⁸ In Mediterranean Europe the social strategies that lineages used were based on setting up marriage alliances to ultimately place the family group on top of the social hierarchy, to socially reproduce the lineage and to avoid its biological depletion by establishing a perpetual succession line.

A bilinear type of succession defined the hereditary system of the late medieval period in southern Europe, one in which the individual and the group could choose which offspring path to follow – either female or male. However, the male succession line prevailed, opening the way to the emergence of the mayorazgo (entailed estate) in the Iberian kingdoms, morgadio in Portugal.⁹ In turn, marriage strategies fundamentally shaped any inheritance

process and thus landownership became the main element of power among the nobility.¹⁰

Late medieval lineages cemented their idiosyncrasies within this edifice of ideas, and these also became central to their actions and modus operandi. During the early modern period in Europe and the Iberian kingdoms, the value of these concepts became even more grounded. Historians argue that ultimately lineage was nothing but a mental construction conceptualised around kinship, blood and the memory that needs to be materialised.¹¹ A late fifteenth- century Spanish chronicle by Fernando del Pulgar validates this affirmation, saying that in a world where everything is of divine origin, ‘God created man but not lineages’.¹²

The case of the Riquelme family can be understood in this theo- retical framework – they were a typical case of a group that gained wealth by their participation in conquest and benefited from the Castilian crown’s donations of land that followed. From the first possessions acquired in the early land partition process, the Riquelme family accumulated an extensive estate that over the years, and especially at the threshold of the sixteenth century, placed them among the Murcian landowning nobility.¹³ The origin of the Riquelme family in Murcia is dated in Riquelme manuscript of 1265 the year of the conquest of Murcia.

Guillén Riquelme entered victorious [and conquering] into that city . . . and he was designated heir in it, among 323 illustrious other knights and settlers as it is shown in that book by king Alfonso X the Wise (on page 4) . . . he was at the capture of the city of Orihuela, the town of Lorca . . . and he received lands as it is shown in his archives and population books.

In the time of king Don Ferdinand, when the king of Aragon James II took the kingdom of Murcia from him and then the king of Aragon expelled from Murcia all the knights that had followed the campaign of Don Ferdinand, and Guillén Riquelme was among them, he sought refuge with king Don Ferdinand who, when he went down to reclaim his kingdom of Murcia, brought with him Guillén Riquelme as the main captain of his troops . . . the king of Murcia entered and ordered the lands of Guillén Riquelme to be returned to him.¹⁴

As is common in sources of the early modern period, the language exaggerates and glorifies the family’s past, aiming to provide magnificence and honour to the lineage. The same

document mentions that Riquelme individuals came from the great kingdom of France, from the house of Monfort, señores and counts of Tolosa. They came from the castle of Rodelas (city of Rochela) – Guillén de Monfort was among other wealthy men from France and Germany who came to the call of Don Pelayo.

Provided the Ricoielmo with weaponry and the piece of land where the Ricoielmo battle had taken place – that is, close to the valley of the castle of Maderuelo, and there is a place named Riquelme in memory of the battle. He was the captain of the Vizcayans, and he had a son that was Pedro Guillén de Monfort.¹⁵

The helmet in the Riquelme coat of arms has its origins in this event. The coat of arms shows a red field with a highlighted arm grabbing the helmet’s plumed top ornament. The celada (crest), a symbol of defence, is the weapon that covers the head and repre- sents life. The rest of the coat of arms confirms the achievement of the family’s merits.¹⁶ The chronicler Francisco Cascales wrote about this representation of the crest according to what Virgil declared in antiquity: ‘“Unun pro cunctis dabitur caput” and “pro capite pugnare” is a proverb meaning to defend one’s life – and to cover the head with the crest is to defend life with our weapons.

The crest was the main weapon of the goddess and god of war, Pallas and Mars.’¹⁷

Some notes about the origin of the last name Riquelme in royal letters mention that this family mainly settled in Murcia and that (though this is not completely certain) they had some origin in Genoa (Italy). The royal letters also reference the manuscripts of Don Miguel de Salazar, Juan de Buegas and Antonio de Varona, who wrote about the Riquelme and thus demonstrate hidalguía.¹⁸ These notes are the only ones different from the notes written by Cascales. The remaining news that Cascales told and the royal letters are strictly the same – an indi- cation that the information in the royal letters, dated in 1769, was copied from the news about the lineage that Cascales wrote about in 1621.¹⁹

However, the Riquelme manuscript was probably redacted before Cascales’s Discursos Historicos, which makes the 1265 manu- script the first – and thus the most reliable – to mention the Riquelme lineage in the early modern period, with no other

objective but the glorification of the lineage. The three sources mention, in seeking to aggrandise the lineage, that

They came from the mountains in France with many others to support king Don Pelayo in his quest to conquer Spain; of which lineage there are great knights in Catalonia, in Jerez de la Frontera and in Murcia, who like others in earlier times tried nothing but to take back our Spain from the Moors and came looking for the oppor- tunity of honour.²⁰

This is how Guillén Riquelme became that glorious forefather of the lineage – his participation in the Castilian conquest of the kingdom of Murcia came to be the main form of validation and a source of honour and prestige for the lineage. Guillén Riquelme appears as one of the main settlers of the city of Murcia, and also the one, among other Riquelme family members, who received more land from the king of Castile, Alfonso X the Wise.²¹ In the book of land partitions of Murcia during the thirteenth century, there are six secular individuals and two clergy documented whose social status was within the middle social strata of the new settlers of the kingdom of Murcia.²² Two clearly different social categories appeared in the book: knights and peones (unfree labour subject to peonage).

Depending on their place in the social structure, each of these members of the Riquelme family received higher- or lower-quality lands. Part of what they received was high-quality heredamientos (inheritances) and irrigated lands by the Segura river.²³ Most of Table 1.1 Social structure of the Riquelme lineage

Name Social status  Secular  Clergy

Guillén Riquelme  Lower knight  X  

Nicolás Riquelme  High-level peon  X  

Bernardo Riquelme  High-level peon    X

Martin Riquelme  High-level peon  X

Juan Riquelme  Middle-level peon  X  

Simón Riquelme  Middle-level peon  X  

Pedro Riquelme  Middle-level peon  X  

Berenguer Riquelme  Lower-level peon  X   

the land that they were given, a total of 88 tahúllas (measure of land in the kingdom of Murcia), was in the Cudiacibid cuadrilla (unit of land). This alquería was in the outskirts of Murcia, and it was divided into four types of land: the vegetable orchard (highly valued), a piece of land that needed manual irrigation, an albar section and a swamp section or almarjal.²⁴

From the heredamiento (inheritance) of the five alquerías they received a total of 24 tahúllas, the lowest-quality piece of land that the Riquelme family received.²⁵ These lands were a semi-swamp, usually given to individuals of a lower social category. The Riquelme received a small portion of land of the lower quality – the Alfande area had both irrigated lands and gardens; the acquisition of Beniazor was a diverse section of mostly albar, though it could rotate with irrigation and vegetable gardens; and the Albadel region was the most sought after because of the quality of the land and the abundance of water;

105.5 tahúllas of irrigation land and 90 of albar in the Beninaya cuad- rilla went to twenty-five settlers, middle- and low-level peon. There were other important irrigation zones like Benicot and Benicomay.

As shown in the chart of partitions, most of the lands that the Riquelme received dated to the third (1266–7) and fourth (1269–

70) partitions. After the third partition, the Riquelme lineage maintained the lands that Alfonso X granted during the first parti- tion. The king of Aragon James I’s partition was ratified. The fourth and fifth partition completed each of the previous donations.

The Riquelme lineage began their venture in the kingdom of Murcia during the reign of Alfonso X. The settlement, however,

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

Lower Level Knight High Level

Peon Middle Level Peon

Lower Level Peon

Graph 1.1 Social structure of the Riquelme lineage

was interrupted during the reign of Sancho IV while Aragonese forces led by James II invaded Murcia. The king of Aragon expelled all knights loyal to the Castilian king, Ferdinand IV. Among them was Guillén Riquelme.²⁶ The Riquelme permanently settled in Murcia only after the Torrellas decision in 1304 that returned property and lands to the expelled Castilian groups. This time around, the Riquelme family consolidated an important amount of land and other properties in the orchard of Murcia.

Over time, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, these possessions increased, not only in the irrigated land suitable for gardening areas within the limits of the city of Murcia, but also all around the kingdom of Murcia and especially in the border strip on the opposite side of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. This loca- tion of both dry lands and irrigated territories was strategic for the definitive push in the reconquest. As with other sectors in the oligarchy, the power of the Riquelme family lay in landownership.

The Riquelme belonged to the landowning nobility of the kingdom of Murcia, and it was around the process of land acquisition and possession, and also using marriage as a strategy, that the Riquelme crafted a network of family alliances.

The evolution and implementation of the system of lineages combined with all these bilateral factors had different chronolo- gies and nuances in each territory.²⁷ This system is tightly related to the consolidation of the aristocracy and the gradual replacement of the old nobility by the new. The Riquelme were part of the new nobility as clientele of the Fajardo lineage.²⁸

In the case of Murcia several factors came into play for this consolidation to happen. On one side, because the nobility disputes (Manuel against Fajardo) occurred in a borderland territory with Islam, war became an element for social promotion among the new lineages. On the other side, and closely related with the first, was the factor of the increasing señorialización (consolidation of lord- ship) in the territory. This was the creation of señoríos (land property) during the late medieval period based on the occupa- tion of unpopulated or uncultivated lands, most of them donated by the crown through the concejo as reward for services rendered in the battle against Muslims from Granada.²⁹ In parallel to the process of feudalisation, the creation of mayorazgos, by which a family avoids the dispersal of the family patrimony by structuring it around the first-born male, also increased. Based on all these

factors, lineage structures consolidated throughout the fifteenth century and were well embedded in society during the early modern period.

1.2. Consolidation of the Trastámara Dynasty: Reaching Economic and Political Powers (1369–1450)

Because of the scarcity of evidence to document this topic, primary sources are inevitably complemented by studies about the family and the nobility in the kingdom of Murcia published in the last several decades. Genealogy studies also play an important role in the process of reconstructing social trajectories of specific families and how each individual shaped their lineage.

Already in the early fourteenth century, chaos and bewilder- ment ravaged the kingdom of Murcia.³¹ After the storm and the uncertainty, a new Murcian elite composed of cadres of new fami- lies settled in the kingdom. This process began when Guillén Riquelme, among other knights, travelled south to the kingdom of Murcia to participate in the conquest.³² In reward for his participa- tion, he became the first knight of the Riquelme family to hold a position in office. He was a regidor (member of the civic council) of Murcia and a procurador in court.³³ However, the occupation by king James II meant an interruption in the complete settlement of the family, though it resumed when Ferdinand IV took the realm.

units of land in tahúllas

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Guillen Riquelme Berenguer Riquelme Bernardo Riquelme Juan Riquelme Martin Riquelme Pedro Riquelme Nicolas Riquelme Simon Riquelme

3rd and 4th Partition 5th Partition

Graph 1.2 Lands given to the Riquelme in the thirteenth-century land partitions (units of land in tahúllas)³⁰

In 1325, during Alfonso XI’s reign, a concejo of forty regidores was created, marking the Riquelme’s time to advance in the kingdom of Murcia. The adelantado named the regidores according to the decisions of the officials whom he also designated. This process was key to the new lineages in becoming part of the oligarchy. Little by little, by participating in the political life of the kingdom and by taking important decisions, they would grad- ually establish the sociopolitical reach of these ‘new’ families.

The Riquelme were one of this new group of families holding regidurías, which also meant a period of renewal, both of regidores and jurados (city and concejo positions), and the assurance of gradual advancement and upward mobility of the families that achieved these posts.

Nobles and hidalgos used public office positions to be part of the old aristocracy. Having served in war to defend the crown was the most direct way to start participating in this process of social assim- ilation, and the process evolved and would be completed during the reign of Alfonso XI in the fourteenth century.

It is worth re-emphasising at this point that since the beginning of the fourteenth century and during most of the fifteenth, frequent disputes and fighting between families to obtain wealth and positions of power created a climate of convulsion and uncer- tainty in the kingdom of Murcia. However, ‘new’ families, the Riquelme among others, needed a leader with enough authority to help them accomplish their goals and see their expectations fulfilled. To do so, new families gathered and established alliances around the Fajardo family as the main lineage – the Fajardo were one of the most important lineages in the Murcian capital because of their close relation to the military order of Santiago and their kinship connections to the Ayala lineage.³⁴ Families united around the Fajardo to exercise more influence and to be immersed in new spaces of power.

For them, accessing positions in public office was the only path to power, and thus they gradually monopolised concejo positions which became their sole and most important aspiration. The Fajardo group was the best ally for the Riquelme in this purpose, since the Fajardo lineage was also on a mission to hold the post of the kingdom’s adelantado mayor, from which both lineages (and other groups that supported the Fajardo) would benefit by obtaining more space and gaining more parcels of power. Another